The Beanstalk Princess
by The Green Woman
Summary: The princess of the beanstalk tells her story.
1. A Happy Beginning

It wasn't so bad, you know; living with a giant and his wife. I liked it, actually, despite a few minor problems; like finding a soup dish that wasn't the size of a horse, for example. But the stories always blow things out of proportion. Like the giant and giantess; they weren't huge. They were quite large, about four times my height. Their proportions were normal too.

Living in the sky with George and Martha was better than being a princess in any case. I was the oldest in my family, expected to marry and ugly, immature prince before the age of fifteen. I ran away. I am sure my parents made a commotion about it, there being a giant in the next kingdom and all. Well, that giant wasn't my giant. I found George a few days later, and asked if he needed someone to help his wife with the cooking. I didn't say I was a princess. He accepted my offer. He said he had trouble sleeping because of the storms that often rumbled across the sky underneath his home. I offered him my voice, and a little golden harp that I'd brought with me from home.

"Martha, I can't reach the sugar," I called from the kitchen. I was standing on a stack of various kitchen items that were as large as I was, but the sugar always managed to get to the high shelf; which was a problem when I wanted to make cookies for George when he got home from work. She didn't answer, but I could hear her footsteps as she approached. She laughed when she was my precariously piled measuring cups and mixers, picking the sugar up with ease.

"What are you baking today?" She always took care to speak gently. The fact that she was larger than I was made her voice that much louder, and during the first week I moved in, I often found my ears ringing at the volume. The three of us had worked out a system without really mentioning it, but sometimes George still forgot, and went bellowing things like 'Fe Fi Fo Fum.' Martha said she loved her husband's poetic imagination. I thought that he could use a few lessons.

"Snicker-doodles," I said. I had looked the recipe up in one of her over-sized cook books the night before, but I didn't want her to know that. "Mom's secret recipe." I was currently engaged in measuring out the ingredients, but I was having a hard time mixing them together. Martha could see my trouble, and did it herself, asking questions along the way.

Finally, the baking sheet made it into the oven, and I sat back, covered from head to toe in cookie dough. I sat back on the counter. "Thanks for your help." I said.

"Sure dear," she said. "After all these year, you're as good as my daughter. How old are you now?"

I sighed. Here it went again. "Nearly twenty."

"That's right. I keep forgetting. It's been so long since George brought you back, bless him. Dear, when are you going to go off and fall in love? I hear there is a nice prince looking for a lady with a gorgeous voice and pretty face…" she trailed off.

"And no doubt a wicked witch to fight off so that he can get the glory of doing battle with a magical being and winning the princess. It never really is about the princess. Its just another fight to win."

Martha didn't say anything back. She knew as well as I did that all the good men were taken, and that princes didn't know the first thing about beauty. They didn't care.

"It's all well and good for you." I told her. "You have George. I think all the good men were born in your generation."

She laughed and the mood in the kitchen lightened a beat.

"Bee Bumbling Fumbling Flying Free," came George's voice from the garden. Martha pushed the kitchen window open a little farther so she could listen and I hopped down from the counter so that I wouldn't have to listen any more. A three year old could rhyme better. I made my way to the small-ish room on the left side of the house that the Giants had set aside for me. There was a bath waiting. I always set up a bath before I made dessert, because I always seemed to end up wearing it. I enjoyed the hot water, and sung a little tune to myself to block out George as he started his next line.

"Gee I'm wondering, mumbling, tumbling, always me,"

I was clean by the time George had made his way inside, discovering every rhyme for mumble along the way, and when I dressed and came back into the kitchen to my great relief, George had finished with his poem, and Martha was watching him with tears in her eyes at his poetic genius. I tried not to roll mine. The whole room smelled like cinnamon sugar. Breathing deeply, I climbed up to the table to sit with them. I didn't have to run twenty flights of stairs though. I sat cross legged and asked George about his day.

"We made it rain over the middle lands today," he said. "It was hard work. I got stuck on bucket duty after one of the hoses backed up. Two hours later, they discovered that there was no actual problem; it was just Bill who decided to sit his giant butt down on the hose. That's why I'm home early."

"Early?" said Martha? "The sun will set soon. The long golden rays were already filling the kitchen, turning the east wall orange.

"They were short on man from the night shift and I drew the short straw. But after the buckets, I told them there was no way."

"Well I for one would not have been happy if my George hadn't been able to come home for dinner." Martha told him. My mind was busy thinking about the giant's hoses. I wondered how they repaired them when they truly did break.

"George, when is the last time that something has gone wrong with one of the hoses?"

His face paled. Martha stood up to get the cookies, and didn't notice. "It was years before you were born I think, but have you heard stories of the Forever-Summer?" I nodded. "It was an awful mess. I had just started, and a lot of people quit before the problem was fixed. There was a problem with the piping that the hoses connect to, but out department doesn't have jurisdiction over that stuff."

I wanted to laugh at the business side of him. Before I had come to live here, I never would have thought that giants used words like jurisdiction. George had this habit of switching between his poetic self and his business self. The giants were very businesslike. They worked the weather, not only rain, but sleet, snow, hale, wind, and the amount of sunlight. They were also very artistic, but their taste wasn't the same as mine, or indeed, many humans. Their art galleries were filled with tick figures, and their music was atrocious. I enjoyed every second of living with Martha and George though, and as far as I was concerned, a few bad tastes weren't enough to condemn them.

Martha put a towel on the table and set the hot pan in front of us. The cookies were almost as long as my legs, but they smelled amazing.

"They're hot," she said unnecessarily.

"Hot soup in a pot," echoed George. "I forgot it was hot, ate it on the dot, and burned is what I got." Martha clapped her hands. I smiled at George much the way a mother would at an overly precocious child. It was the best reaction, a medium between laughing hysterically and saying something I might regret.

The two of them carried on like a young couple for a few minutes. I watched the last few rays of the sun sink below the clouds. The whole world still glowed orange though. It wouldn't darken here until the sun disappeared behind the earth. I missed those sunsets, watching the orange disc sink into a bow and then fall behind the mountains. They were true beauty.

Martha was dishing out the cookies before I came out of my reverie. She gave me a small piece off of hers. Of course, I wouldn't be able to eat a whole cookie without being very sick. After she had finished hers, she bustled around making dinner. She and George each had two roast pigs to themselves, plus a loaf of bread that was as long as I was. Giants loved to eat, and they would stuff themselves to the breaking point. I took a quarter of a slice of Martha's bread, and a piece of meat from one of George's pigs, and contented myself with a sandwich. I was always improvising as far as my own meals were concerned. I didn't mind.

When he was finished, George declared that he was exhausted, and asked me if I would sing for him. Martha cleaned the dishes and I sat on George's alarm clock in their room and played, letting my voice flow harmonically along with the harp-strings. He was snoring lightly by the time Martha came in. She climbed in next to him, and I played her to sleep as well, and then I retired myself, to the little room they had given me, that was probably bigger than many people's houses.

Before I fell asleep, I wondered if they even remembered me back home. It had been almost six years, after all. All of my sisters were probably contentedly married or about to be rescued. I wasn't sure, but I thought George was talking about my youngest sister having been kidnapped by an ogre. I knew that the eldest after was getting involved with the frog down by the lily pond, but I wasn't sure if he really _was_ a prince or not. I slipped into sleep wondering if there was some arrogant prince searching for me right now. I knew no one could ever find me here, but it was still a frightening thought.


	2. Martha's Giant Mistake

The next morning I awoke to Martha in a frenzy. She was covered in mud which must have meant she was weeding the garden. I thought she would have woken me up to help, and at first I was annoyed.

"Scarlette!" she practically bellowed at me when I came into the kitchen. George was at work, and she was in a panic; and I was now deaf.

"Calm yourself Martha!" I said, louder than necessary. I didn't want her to shout at me again, or the deafness might be permanent.

"I'm sorry." She slumped into a chair in defeat and told me. "It's only that I have just ruined everything!" She started to panic, and I had to calm her down again.

"Please Martha," I said once she was breathing normally. "You need to tell me as calm as you can what's happened."

"I was weeding," she explained. "I knew that you would want to help, but you looked so restful that I couldn't help but leave you to your dreams. I was doing okay until the mice came." Giant mice were a bit of a problem. They were smaller than me, but the biggest were about the size of a Great Dane. They had big yellow teeth and little beady eyes that were sometimes red in color; nasty things. Some of them had learned to speak with the giants.

"Well, they were having a nice conversation. They were traveling, trying to see the giant world from end to end. I was eavesdropping and I stopped paying attention to the beans I was working around. I… I," she couldn't continue, bursting into another round of hysterics.

It turned out that she had cut off one of the bean pods.

"Before I could catch it, it slipped through a little hole in the clouds. They get thin in places, sometimes. As long as we're careful, nothing terrible happens," she said. "I've only heard the stories, legends of what happens when our kind mixes with your kind." She was crying again. "I'll go to jail I'll be executed… I'll ruin George's name. Who is going to care for him?"

"You won't go to jail Martha." I told her, stern enough that she stopped mid-sob. "I bet nothing will even happen. I mean, how big can beans get, right?" This was the wrong thing to say.

"I take very careful measures in my garden," she wailed. "A bean stalk that's left untended can grow exponentially!"

"It has to die sooner or later." I said, "Besides, what is a really tall stalk to anyone down there anyway, they won't care.

"I just know something awful will happen," she sounded half convinced.

"More like they will thank the gods for ending world hunger with a huge beanstalk and enough beans to feed the whole kingdom. You'll be a hero in their world!"

I would have passed her my handkerchief, but it wouldn't have been much good. Instead, I grabbed one of the blanket sixed napkins that her and George used during dinner and drug it over to where she was. She thanked me. Ducking down and covering my ears, she blew. It sounded like an orchestra that wasn't in tune, with the tubas all sitting out in the front. She blew twice more, then sniffed experimentally.

"You are right." She dotted her eyes and set the napkin down. "Well, I guess I had better go finish weeding the garden. I think there are some ripe tomatoes on the vine as well."

"Did you want my help?" I asked.

"Actually, one of the stones fell out of the wedding ring that George proposed to me with. I was wondering if you would take a look? You're so much smaller than me." She placed the ring on the table.

"Sure, I'll do what I can." I said as she picked up a ruby the size of my thumbnail. The ring itself was the size that a necklace would have been on me. "Could you bring me the repair kit?"

I was referring to George's eyeglass repair kit. It had several small screwdrivers inside it, as well as a me-sized mallet that I had added the first time they asked me to do a job that fit my size. This was the third stone that had come loose. I kept telling Martha that she should see a professional jeweler, but she informed me that I was twice as good for half the price (if you considered room and board half the price).

I set to work and she went back outside, bringing back in a basket full of vegetables in one hand and a few ripe tomatoes in the other. The she went back outside. I focused on the ring, first bending the holding pieces, then fitting the stone back in place. I was halfway through wondering where giants got their jewels. They obviously couldn't mine the clouds, and aside from living with George and Martha, I had never seen a gem of the size and quality that they owned; even among the family's jewels. The biggest gem was the one in mother's crown, and that was maybe a fourth the size of this one.

When Martha came back in, I gave her the ring and she exclaimed, and said that she might recommend me to work at the jewelers soon. Then she decided that she would be too lonely here at home without me and changed her mind. We started making lunch.

Jack whistled as he took the cow into town to sell. His mother was at home, tearing apart the house in one of her raves, looking for the gold china for the prince who had come to pay her a visit. Jack laughed to himself. Mom's disease was getting worse, and the doctor refused to come because Jack didn't have any money to pay him. Jack thought the whole situation was hilarious. Paying money for a doctor to tell him something he already knew – his mother was losing her marbles.

He decided to sell the cow anyway, because the cabinets _were_ empty, and both he and his mom needed to eat. Not that she would eat anything ordinary. She tended to mix everything Jack prepared into one large pile of mush.

"Hello there lady," said the man passing Jack. He wasn't old, but he looked very odd. His teeth were crooked (the ones that were left anyway) and he had a few mismatched articles of clothing on his loose frame. "You taking Bessie there to market?" Jack couldn't place the accent.

"Yes," Jack answered warily. The man had that odd air about him that warlocks and fairies had when they disguised themselves in the mortal realm.

"May I save you some steps?" The man asked.

"What do you mean by that?" Jack asked back.

Out of his pockets, the man pulled three over-sized bean seeds. They were of ordinary shape and color, but each was about four times as large as a normal seed.

"What are those?" Jack asked.

"Magic beans," said the man without any more explanation than that.

"How much?" asked Jack.

"I'll trade ya' for Bessie," said the man.

Jack thought for a second, than handed Bessie's lead rope over to the man, taking the beans and shoving them into his pocket. The man grinned his weird smile and walked back the way he had come. Jack turned and did the same, thinking all the way. If bean seeds this size grew huge plants, he wouldn't have to pay for food ever again. If not, he could go to market again tomorrow with his mother's ancient wedding dress and a few of the silver spoons they had left; they wouldn't fetch as much as the cow, but surely he could rope some innocent girl into paying more than the dress was worth.

When he got home, his mother was talking animatedly to Aphrodite, and warned her son that growing giant beanstalks was a dangerous pastime. Jack ignored it. His mother was full of bizarre and coincidental information. He went straight to the tiny garden that was full of wilted stalks and planted the seeds, giving them some water before going back inside to attempt to get his mother into bed.


End file.
